R. A. Lafferty Quotes

75 Sourced Quotes

Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it. There is the forgetfulness and the loss of identity. The spirit, even as the body, is unstrung and burst and scattered. One goes down to death, and it leaves a mark on one forever.

R. A. Lafferty
This petty place cannot be Hell, Roadstrum? Ah, but it is my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it.

R. A. Lafferty
"I'm doing pretty good. I'm a seminal genius, they say, and I have the most sophisticated tools ever devised to work with. And I do build some good things for them. I'm quite successful. I'll tell you something, though. In the daytime, with all those sophisticated tools, and particularly if someone's watching me, I just stall around. But at night — "
"Ah, at night! What do you do then, Hondstarfer?"
"Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get my stone hammers. That's when I build the good stuff. Don't give me away, though, Roadstrum.

R. A. Lafferty
"Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names," the Black Pope was saying, and now his head was quite powdered with snow. "It used to be only the English who excelled in the deception of words. Then the French went even beyond them, and now the whole world is adept at it."

R. A. Lafferty
These men were the salt of the skies, the one out of ten who had determinedly stayed alive through the whole war, very often hurt, absolutely refusing to be killed.

R. A. Lafferty
The place itself, and ne'er a good word spoke of it,
You shiver when you even make a joke of it. Though some go cocky, gaily in hand-basket there,
The most fare sadly in a clammy casket there… Undying pain and gaping loss, no doubt of it.
A wide way leading in and no way out of it! But none have told the blackest horror shrouded there —
Tall teeming terror‚ but it sure is crowded there.

R. A. Lafferty
There are skies we have not seen yet! There are whole realms still unvisited by us. We will not be penned in even a giant's pen. We fly!

R. A. Lafferty
There are no rules. We do whatever seems the most fun.

R. A. Lafferty
Every science is made up entirely of anomalies rearranged to fit.

R. A. Lafferty
Listen now to a series of sayings that always come hard to brave people. Our own great movement will grow with its own impetus wherever it is not blighted. We will break up persons of blight and centers of blight. But often, and this will be the hard part for all of you to understand, we will warn and advise before we kill. And quite often we will not kill at all. Try to understand this.

R. A. Lafferty
His soaring vaunt escaped the blooming ears of us,
He's gone, he's dead, he's dirt, he disappears from us! Be this the death of highest thrust of human all?
The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all? Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it;
Make no mistake, this only seems

R. A. Lafferty
Brannagan had been to more places than Finnegan had, including the same places. He had not only skirted the d'Entre-Casteau Islands, he had walked all over them. He had not only sailed through China Straits, he had dived in them for old wrecks. He had not only climbed the Cloudy Mountains, but had panned gold in their streams and dips.

R. A. Lafferty
Paul, there is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream.

R. A. Lafferty
Beware of those who manufacture final answers as they go along, of those who will catch you on their catch-phrases and let you perish in the traps. All the final answers were given in the beginning. They stand shining, above and beyond us, but they are always there to be seen. They may be too bright for us, they may be too clear for us. Well then, we must clarify our own eyes. Our task is to grow out until we reach them.

R. A. Lafferty
"I am mistress of all the sciences. I go so far beyond all else that my work is called magic. I manipulate noumena, regarding monads as points of entry tangential to hylomorphism. As to the paradox of Primary Essence being contained in Quiddity, the larger in the smaller, I have my own solution. The difficulty is always in not confusing Contingency with Accidence. Do you understand me?"
"Sure. You're a witch."

R. A. Lafferty
It was their way of defying that tricky place Earth. That place will hurt you if you let it get the hop on you. They spooked the Earth spooks away with their stories. They whistled in the dark.

R. A. Lafferty
"Here there are warlocks and mandragoras and witches," the navigation data log issued.
"When your machines start to go droll on you you're in trouble," Roadstrum growled. "I can get wise answers from my men. I don't need a machine for that."

R. A. Lafferty
There are only two possible statements that can be made about the worlds," the Black Pope of the Carlist Hills had lectured one day. "Alpha: There is a God. Omega: there is not a God. To adhere to either of these two statements strongly is to be logical at least. Not to do so is to be in the snivelling wasteland between and to have no point of contact with logic or reason.

R. A. Lafferty
I'll break the spell or the science of her singing yet. As the only man left it devolves on me to do it.

R. A. Lafferty
Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them.
In a way it was their greatest feat. No one else had ever broken out of there before.

R. A. Lafferty
I've had enough of this place where they stuff you full of bull and then hunt you down and kill you every day.

R. A. Lafferty
In its flexibility and in its wide-open opportunities, this is the total Utopia. Anything that you can conceive of, you can do in this non-world. Nothing can stop you except a total bankruptcy of creativity. The seedbed is waiting. All the circumstances stand ready. The fructifying minerals are literally jumping out of the ground. And nothing grows. And nothing grows. And nothing grows. Well, why doesn't it?

R. A. Lafferty
The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us. We were already pretty salty animals when we came here! It is toy animals she has turned us into. We have been working against ourselves, trying to be men again, but to be her idea of men, since we live in her context. But she does not know real animals, or men. … Be you not toys any longer! Stir up the wild business in you. You have to be real animals before you can be men.

R. A. Lafferty
Be not nervous. In a very little while you will either be a member or you will not be.

R. A. Lafferty
Now then, I have given you a short fair hearing as the law requires. I do not solicit the support of your party, though, in all honesty, if it had more than one member I might.

R. A. Lafferty
When very young, Hannali would sit on the black ground and chuckle till it was feared he would injure himself. Whatever came over him, prenatal witticism or ancestral joke, he seldom was able to hold his glee. In all his life he never learned to hold it in.

R. A. Lafferty
The eye in his hand winked at him dourly. Eye was a tough old gump, not given to easy enthusiasms. Roadstrum put it back in his pocket and once more contemplated his good fortune.

R. A. Lafferty
The good stories, of course, write themselves. And somebody wants to know who are the really good writers, and how many of them there are. There aren't any. Most of the writers are likeable frauds. Some are unlikable frauds.

R. A. Lafferty
The shapes they take are both objective and subjective. One can shape them a little with one's own mind.

R. A. Lafferty
We ourselves become the bridges out over the interval that is the world and time. It is a daring thing to fling ourselves out over that void that is black and scarlet below and green and gold above. A bridge does not abandon its first shore when it grows out in spans towards the further one.

R. A. Lafferty